SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
us department of agriculture
Trump and GOP Wage War on Children's Food Aid to Fund Tax Cuts for the Rich
The Republican Party's proposed cuts to nutrition assistance for children, said one analyst, "would be part of legislation that would give massive tax cuts to the wealthiest people and businesses."
Mar 13, 2025
The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are waging a multi-front war on nutrition benefits for children, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture moving this week to end programs that provided over $1 billion in funding for schools and charity organizations to buy food from local farmers as GOP lawmakers simultaneously take aim at school meal programs as part of an effort to fund tax breaks for the wealthy.
Schools and farmers are "bracing for impact," as The Washington Postput it, after the USDA axed the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program as part of a purported effort to "return to long-term, fiscally responsible initiatives."
The Local Food for Schools Program, according to the USDA, "no longer effectuates agency priorities."
The decision to kill the programs could be disastrous for schools, childcare facilities, and other organizations that were expecting federal funding this year. Politicoobserved that "roughly $660 million that schools and childcare facilities were counting on to purchase food from nearby farms" has been terminated by the Trump administration.
"Trump and Elon Musk have declared that feeding children and supporting local farmers are no longer 'priorities,'" Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement, noting that her state was set to receive $12.2 million "to provide local healthy food to childcare programs and schools, and to create new procurement relationships with local farmers and small businesses."
"Instead of strengthening our food supply chain and supporting students and food banks, the Trump White House wants cuts, chaos, and cruelty."
Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio), vice ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, said that "the Trump administration is proving to be bad for farmers, bad for children, and bad for people in need."
Food insecurity rose for the second consecutive year in 2024, and roughly 14 million children in the U.S. are food insecure, according to the nonprofit Feeding America.
"Instead of strengthening our food supply chain and supporting students and food banks, the Trump White House wants cuts, chaos, and cruelty," said Brown. "These two programs were a win-win for farmers and communities, and it is incredibly short-sighted to abruptly end them."
Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, are pushing for deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid that "could make it harder for schools to operate meal programs and for families to obtain free or reduced-price school meals, Summer EBT, or benefits through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)."
That's according to an analysis published Wednesday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which noted that "school meal programs and Summer EBT use SNAP and Medicaid data to automatically enroll children."
"If low-income families with children lose their SNAP and/or Medicaid benefits, they would have to complete a school meal application instead of being automatically enrolled," CBPP warned. "In addition to diminished access to meals during the school year, families who are unable to successfully navigate the application process would no longer be automatically enrolled in Summer EBT. Families with children who lose SNAP and/or Medicaid would also lose their adjunctive income eligibility for WIC."
Zoë Neuberger, a senior fellow at CBPP, said that "as families struggle to keep up with the rising cost of food, Republicans in Congress are looking at making it harder for millions of children in families with low incomes to get free meals at school."
"Worse yet, the proposed cuts would be part of legislation that would give massive tax cuts to the wealthiest people and businesses," said Neuberger. "Congress should instead focus on removing red tape for schools and families so parents can afford groceries and children can get the meals they need for healthy development."
The School Nutrition Association (SNA), a national nonprofit whose members help provide meals to schools across the U.S., is sounding the alarm about three specific proposals that Republicans are weighing as they craft their sprawling reconciliation package:
- Restricting the Community Eligibility Provision;
- Requiring income verification with every free and reduced-price school meal application; and
- Ending Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility
"These proposals would cause millions of children to lose access to free school meals at a time when working families are struggling with rising food costs," SNA president Shannon Gleave warned in a statement earlier this week. "Meanwhile, short-staffed school nutrition teams, striving to improve menus and expand scratch-cooking, would be saddled with time-consuming and costly paperwork created by new government inefficiencies."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Farmers Sue Trump USDA Over Deletion of 'Vital' Climate Information
"USDA should be working to protect our food system from droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather, not denying the public access to critical resources," argued one attorney.
Feb 24, 2025
Climate defenders and farmers sued the Trump administration in federal court on Monday over "the U.S. Department of Agriculture's unlawful purge of climate-related policies, guides, datasets, and resources from its websites."
The complaint was filed in the Southern District of New York by Earthjustice and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY).
The case focuses on just one part of Republican President Donald Trump's sweeping effort to purge the federal government and its resources of anyone or anything that doesn't align with his far-right agenda, including information about the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
"USDA's irrational climate change purge doesn't just hurt farmers, researchers, and advocates. It also violates federal law several times over," Earthjustice associate attorney Jeffrey Stein said in a statement. "USDA should be working to protect our food system from droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather, not denying the public access to critical resources."
"The Trump administration has deliberately stripped farmers and ranchers of the vital tools they need to confront the escalating extreme weather threats."
Specifically, the groups accused the department of violating the Administrative Procedure Act, Freedom of Information Act, and Paperwork Reduction Act. As the complaint details, on January 30, "USDA Director of Digital Communications Peter Rhee sent an email ordering USDA staff to 'identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change' by 'no later than close of business' on Friday, January 31."
"Within hours, and without any public notice or explanation, USDA purged its websites of vital resources about climate-smart agriculture, forest conservation, climate change adaptation, and investment in clean energy projects in rural America, among many other subjects," the document states. "In doing so, it disabled access to numerous datasets, interactive tools, and essential information about USDA programs and policies."
EWG Midwest director Anne Schechinger explained that "by wiping critical climate resources from the USDA's website, the Trump administration has deliberately stripped farmers and ranchers of the vital tools they need to confront the escalating extreme weather threats like droughts and floods."
NOFA-NY board president Wes Gillingham emphasized that "farmers are on the frontlines of climate impacts, we have been reacting to extreme weather and making choices to protect our businesses and our food system for years. Climate change is not a hoax. Farmers, fishermen, and foresters know from experience, that we need every piece of science and intergenerational knowledge to adjust to this new reality."
Rebecca Riley, NRDC's managing director of food and agriculture, pointed out that "by removing climate information from the USDA's website, the Trump administration is not just making farming harder—it is undermining our ability to adapt and respond to the very challenges climate change presents."
The coalition asked the court to declare the purge unlawful and order the USDA to restore the webpages, to refrain from further implementing Rhee's directive, and to comply with its legal obligations regarding public notices.
“USDA's policies influence everything from the shape of our economy to the food we eat," said Stephanie Krent, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. "USDA's sudden elimination of webpages that used to provide this information hurts all of us. Members of the public have a right to know how the department is implementing its priorities and administering its programs."
The New York Timesreported Monday that "the Agriculture Department referred questions about the lawsuit to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment." The suit is just one of dozens filed against the Trump administration since the inauguration last month.
Schechinger stressed that "this lawsuit isn't just about transparency—it's about holding those in power accountable for undermining the very information that helps protect the livelihoods of food producers, the food system, and our future."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'True Ebenezer Scrooge Stuff': Final Spending Bill Omitted SNAP Theft Protections
"Ending the process to replace stolen benefits for victims will also make it more difficult to track and stop the individuals behind these crimes, because fewer people will report the crime," wrote one food assistance advocate.
Dec 24, 2024
Congressional budget watchers concerned with food insecurity are lamenting the loss of a provision impacting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the final spending deal Congress passed Saturday, which very narrowly averted a government shutdown. The measure is a continuing resolution that will keep the government funded through mid-March at current levels, and includes funding for a few select priorities, like disaster relief.
The final bill did not extend protections for victims of SNAP benefit theft after it was axed from an original spending deal—a move that Bobby Kogan, the senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, called "true Ebenezer Scrooge stuff." Kogan laid blame at the feet of billionaire Elon Musk, who whipped up opposition to the earlier, bipartisan version of the spending deal.
Under the original deal, the SNAP benefit theft protections would have been continued for another four years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
SNAP benefits, a far-reaching social program that helps low-income Americans buy groceries, is vulnerable to theft through "skimming"—a practice where thieves can take advantage of the relatively low security on SNAP EBT cards by hiding devices in payment machines that allow them to clone card information, including users' PINs.
"Today, I'm thinking about the low-income families across the country who are about to discover that the SNAP benefits they were counting on to buy groceries were stolen after 11:59 pm last night—and who no longer have a way to get those benefits replaced because of this decision," wrote Katie Bergh, senior policy analyst on the food assistance team at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, on Saturday.
Congress approved federal funding for states to reimburse the stolen benefits in 2022. A couple of states reinstate skimmed SNAP funds using state money, according to NBC. Federal funds have so far replaced $53.5 million in stolen SNAP benefits, a dollar amount that has impacted 115,596 households, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"Ending the process to replace stolen benefits for victims will also make it more difficult to track and stop the individuals behind these crimes, because fewer people will report the crime," wrote Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in a statement Monday.
Cox said that omitting this protection will lessen SNAP benefits by roughly $1.5 billion over the next ten years, citing Congressional Budget Office estimates.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular